Editors’ Note

After the collapse of the state socialist regime in 1989, the de-industrialization and privatisation of the economy was accompanied by processes of impoverishment across significant segments of the working-class population (Chivu et al., 2017), as well as large-scale emigration of Romanian workers to Western European countries and North America (Sandu, 2006). During the following three decades, Romania experienced growing social inequalities (UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur, 2016), unequal access to social protection (Adăscăliţei, Raţ, & Spătari, 2020), and struggles over labour rights (Guga, 2014; Varga, & Freyberg-Inan, 2015). Today, the country has the fifth largest and the fastest growing diaspora in the world relative to its population, with approximately 3.6 million people living outside the country (OECD, 2019, 13).